Monthly Archives: June 2004

David Hardy and Jason Clarke’s Michael Moore Is A Big Fat Stupid White Man has skyrocketed to number three on Amazon’s best seller list. Is there any chance that it could dislodge Bill Clinton’s My Life at number one? Hard to imagine, but let’s all buy a copy. Given the amount of free publicity that Moore’s movie has received for its opening weekend performance–besting White Chicks and Dodgeball–it would seem »

NRO has posted Andrew McCarthy’s excellent column on the Insane Clown Posse’s three detention decisions: “A mixed bag.” Here’s McCarthy on Rasul: On September 11, 2001, the most atrocious foreign invasion in our history took place, killing 3000 of us. Far from the first attack, it was the copestone of eight years marked, roughly annually, by attempted or successful terrorist operations. Even after 9/11, the enemy has continued demonstrate stealth »

StrategyPage says that “the Arab-American marine held by Iraqi terrorists, and threatened with death, had apparently deserted and was attempting to return to family members still living in Lebanon.” He sought assistance from Iraqis working on the base, but they betrayed (or sold) him to the terrorists. If true, it’s kind of unnerving to think that Iraqis working on our base are collaborating with terrorists. StrategyPage also claims that the »

Reader Dafydd ab Hugh writes to note that the link to Professor Yoo’s Wall Street Journal column on the Insane Clown Posse’s detention decisions including Rasul is inaccessible to non-subscribers, and to argue that my excerpts of the column were misleading, in the post “Professor Yoo’s dissent.” I think Rasul is the most important of the three detention decisions; I may be wrong, and Professor Yoo suggests otherwise. I think »

Yesterday Jacques Chirac vetoed a U.S. plan to send NATO troops to help maintain security during Afghanistan’s upcoming election. Chirac ignored a direct plea from Afghanistan’s President Hamid Karzai, who traveled to Istanbul to ask NATO to help: I would like you to please hurry, as NATO, to Afghanistan. Come sooner than September Which tells us something about France and its position in the war on terror. France’s position has »

Last weekend we posted Saturday’s Minneapolis Star Tribune story on al Qaeda’s man in Minneapolis. On Sunday we also noted the Boston Globe’s related story on al Qaeda’s man in Boston. Today the Star Tribune follows up with “Minneapolis terror suspect licensed to haul hazardous freight.” The information reported by the Star Tribune appears to be derived primarily from a government affidavit filed in connection with Elzahabi’s indictment. Greg Gordon »

In connection with William Buckley’s historic divestiture of the ownership of National Review yesterday, NRO has posted the rousing Publisher’s Statement that Buckley contributed to the magazine’s debut issue in 1955. It’s the conservative version of the shot heard ’round the world — what a brilliant and audacious statement of purpose: We have nothing to offer but the best that is in us. That, a thousand Liberals who read this »

In the Wall Street Journal Professor John Yoo concisely gets to the heart of the harm wrought by the Insane Clown Posse in the most important of the three detention cases (Rasul) decided earlier this week: “The Supeme Court goes to war.” Below are the paragraphs of most interest to me, but the whole column is must reading. Professor Yoo writes: [T]he Justices left the hard questions up to the »

The Washington Times has a fascinating article on the detective work performed in Iraq by the Army’s Alpha Company, 91st Engineer Battalion: “Soldiers ‘get the bad boys’ in raids.” Columbo himself couldn’t have done it better: Sgt. Jimmy Robles, 25, swabs the hands and faces of the men [being investigated] with paper from an Expray kit, which detects explosive chemicals. “Next,” he calls as he motions that he is ready »

The ketchup lady came to the heartland yesterday, stumping in Des Moines on behalf of John Kerry. Based on the AP report, she seems to have sought out tales of woe and offered her own innovative proposal that the government “provide incentives to companies that offer health insurance to employees.” Why didn’t we think of that? Addressing the suggestion that her billion dollar fortune might render her somewhat out of »

In the tradition of his “Good news from Iraq” series, Arthur Chrenkoff has added “Good news from Afghanistan.” The bad news from Afghanistan comes courtesy of Jacques Chirac: “France vetoes Afghan mission.” Claudia Rosett conducts a Cook’s tour of the world’s hellholes and refers in passing to how “Frere Jacques” (and brother Kofi) contribute to the bad news in her weekly OpinionJournal column: “All in the family.” »

Last week Evan Coyne Maloney showed up with his video camera and microphone to record interviews with our fellow citizens standing in the line of autograph-seekers snaking around the corner of Broadway and Wall Street in lower Manhattan. He asked the Clintophiles for their thoughts on Bill, his book, and his legacy. You can view the results on Evan’s Brain Terminal site under the heading “The Clinton legacy.” Highly recommended. »

Rantingprofs has a good piece on how the editorial pages of the New York Times and Washington Post have reacted to the Supreme Court decisions in the detainee cases. The Post is happy to see limits placed on the administration, but nervous about the implications of the decision granting Guantanamo detainees access to U.S. courts. By contrast, the Times follows its “war, what war?” approach. Rantingprofs also offers this sensible »

The results of the Canadian election are in. As Fox News reports, “voters stripped the long-dominant Liberal Party of its outright control of Parliament, but left it enough seats to take charge of Canada’s first minority government in 25 years.” According to Fox, the Liberals will likely form “an informal governing coalition” with the left-wing New Democratic Party. However, the Toronto Star suggests that what is really in store for »

William F. Buckley, Jr. is the founder of the modern conservative movement that gained its political expression first in Barry Goldwater and then Ronald Reagan. At age 29 in 1955 when Buckley founded National Review as the voice of the movement, he performed two acts of statesmanship that were vital to the movement’s ultimate, if unlikely, success: he reserved exclusive ownership of the magazine to himself so as to prevent »